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German Catholic Church to allow morning-after pill in rape cases

The German Bishops' Conference said church-run hospitals would now ensure proper medical, psychological, and emotional care for rape victims

Germany's Catholic Church has decided to permit certain types of morning-after pill for women who have been raped.

The decision comes after two Catholic hospitals provoked an outcry last month for refusing to treat a rape victim in Cologne.

The German Bishops' Conference said church-run hospitals would now ensure proper medical, psychological, and emotional care for rape victims.

This includes administering pills that prevent pregnancy without inducing an abortion.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said a four-day meeting of German bishops in the western town of Trier had "confirmed that women who have been victims of rape will get the proper human, medical, psychological and pastoral care".

"That can include medication with a 'morning-after pill' as long as this has a prophylactic and not an abortive effect," he said in a statement.

"Medical and pharmaceutical methods that induce the death of an embryo may still not be used."

That means there is no change to the Catholic Church's ban on the so-called abortion pill based on the drug mifepristone or RU-486, and marketed as Mifegyne or Mifeprex.

The German church has already faced mass desertions over cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

It had been expected to change its position on the morning-after pill after apologising about the Cologne incident.

The church remains firmly opposed to abortion and artificial birth control.

The German Catholic church will now differentiate between pills that prevent sperm from fertilising an egg in the womb and pills that induce an abortion, in cases of rape.

Cologne's Cardinal Joachim Meisner, an ally of the outgoing German-born Pope Benedict, has already apologised for church hospitals' treatment of the woman.

He said it "shames us deeply because it contradicts our Christian mission and our purpose".

A 25-year-old woman was referred to Catholic run hospitals in Cologne by her doctor for a gynaecological exam after she was drugged at a party and woke up on a park bench fearing she had been raped.

The Catholic hospitals refused to treat her because they could not prescribe the pill, which is taken after sex to avoid pregnancy.

She was eventually treated at a Protestant church-run hospital.

The German bishops' meeting in Trier also tried to address criticism of sexual discrimination by the Church.

The bishops vowed to include more women in leadership positions, although this will not include the ordination of women as priests.